❄️ When It Disappears. The Cold Reality of SaaS Data Loss and What Smart Teams Do Differently
- David Long
- Aug 6, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Aug 8, 2025
By FullBackup
Most people don’t think about backup - until something disappears. And when it does - suddenly, silently, and without warning - the real question isn’t what went wrong?
It’s can we get it back?
At FullBackup, we’ve helped businesses navigate those moments. Whether it’s Microsoft 365, Power Platform, Salesforce or Zendesk, we’ve seen how fast things can go wrong when recovery isn’t ready.
Let’s look at the most common ways data vanishes and what smart teams are doing differently to stay in control.
🎭 1. It Disappears Because Someone Messed Up
Sometimes it's a retention policy set to 9 days instead of 90.Sometimes it's a PowerShell script with the wrong scope.
Other times, a well-meaning admin follows outdated documentation and wipes out more than intended. These aren’t malicious. They’re just human.
The difference between a minor mistake and a major disaster? Whether you can undo it - quickly and completely.
🔥 Real SaaS Data Loss Stories
Not Hacks. Not Fires. Just Defaults.
Some of the most devastating data loss events in SaaS history didn’t come from ransomware or infrastructure failure - they came from a single tick box, an unchecked default, or an invisible policy.
Here are just a few real-world examples:
💬 KPMG’s Microsoft Teams Retention Incident (2020)
What happened: KPMG, one of the world’s largest professional services firms, experienced a mass data loss after a global Microsoft Teams retention policy was misconfigured. A mistakenly applied retention rule led to the permanent deletion of chat histories for 145,000 users - impacting collaboration and records compliance across the organisation.
Why it matters: This wasn’t an attack. It was a configuration change - instantly applied, irrevocably destructive.
🔗 Sources: Reported by multiple Microsoft partners in industry briefings and IT forums. No official press release available.→ Related context (LinkedIn post discussing the case)
🏷️ Microsoft Purview Retention Label Error (2023)
What happened: Multiple organisations using Microsoft 365 Purview mistakenly applied a label that expired content - including Exchange and Teams messages - after 30 days. Once purged, Microsoft could not recover the data, as the retention label explicitly triggered permanent deletion.
Why it matters: The platform did exactly what it was told to do. There was no backup. No second chance.
🏥 NHS Trust Loses Email Records (UK)
What happened: A UK-based NHS Trust lost critical patient emails after staff deleted them from Outlook, unknowingly relying on the default 30-day retention period for deleted items in Microsoft 365.
After the window expired, emails were permanently removed - and without third-party backup, there was no way to retrieve them.
Why it matters: Default settings don’t meet healthcare-grade retention needs. This scenario has been discussed in UK public sector risk assessments.
🔗 No official statement - surfaced via Freedom of Information requests and NHS Trust risk reports.
🧪 Salesforce Sandbox Misconfiguration
What happened: A developer pushed changes from a Salesforce sandbox into production - including automated record deletion workflows that weren’t meant to go live.
Thousands of customer records were removed before the issue was detected. Because the deletion was system-driven but classified as a user action, Salesforce could not recover the data.
Why it matters: Configuration drift inside SaaS apps can have just as much impact as malicious actions.
🔗 Discussed across Salesforce forums and in several admin community webinars.
🎟️ Zendesk Automation Wipes Customer Records
What happened: An Australian e-commerce company configured Zendesk to auto-close inactive tickets after 7 days - but accidentally enabled an automation that also deleted all closed tickets after 30 days.
The result? Thousands of historical support conversations vanished permanently - just before an internal review.
Why it matters: Even well-meaning automations can quietly erase key data. And without off-platform backup, there’s no rewind.
🔗 Case discussed at multiple ANZ SaaS user group meetups; not officially published.
⚠️ Not Just Disasters. Defaults.
In every case above, the damage wasn’t caused by external threats - it came from within the SaaS platforms themselves:
A misconfigured retention policy in Microsoft 365
A deletion workflow accidentally pushed to Salesforce production
An automation rule in Zendesk with unintended consequences
The platform did exactly what it was told to do - and then made it unrecoverable.
🧨 No confirmation prompt.⛔ No undo button.🆘 No vendor support ticket that could bring it back.
💡 Recovery Tip:
People make mistakes - even your best ones. Your backups need to be versioned, immutable, and independent of the platform. And you need a culture where team members feel safe reporting errors before they snowball.
🔐 2. It Disappears Because Someone Wanted It Gone
Some threats don’t just walk in. They crawl through phishing emails, escalate privileges, and quietly delete your ability to recover.
Modern attacks don’t just target files - they go after your backups.
We’ve seen ransomware groups erase Microsoft 365 and Azure backup configs before encrypting production systems.
No backups. No recovery. No leverage.
These attacks used to be nation-state territory. Now they’re sold as a service to anyone with crypto and bad intentions.
☁️ 3. It Disappears Because the Cloud Was Never Built to Save You
Cloud platforms are engineered for scale, not for resilience. And when things go wrong - which they do - the consequences can be catastrophic.
In 2024, Microsoft publicly admitted that it lost weeks of crucial audit logs after a major security incident. Around the same time, a misconfigured Google Cloud service wiped critical pension data from a public sector provider. And outages in Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and AWS continue to increase in both frequency and impact.
The harsh truth? The cloud is highly available - until it isn’t. And when it fails, organisations are often left with no recourse, no rollback, and no recovery.
The problem worsens when your backup lives inside the same ecosystem that just failed. When your identity platform, storage, and backup all share the same cloud infrastructure — or worse, the same admin credentials - you’ve unintentionally created a shared blast radius.
That’s why immutable, isolated backup isn’t a luxury anymore. It’s a necessity.
Immutable means your backups can’t be altered or deleted, even if admin credentials are compromised. Off-platform means they’re not reliant on the same cloud or identity layer that failed - so you can still recover, even when everything else is down.
Platforms like Keepit are built around this principle. Backups are stored in blockchain-verified, immutable vaults, hosted independently from the production environment - with no reliance on Microsoft, Google, AWS, or shared identity providers.
Resilience isn’t where your data is stored. It’s where your attackers can’t reach.
If your organisation is serious about operational continuity, cyber resilience, and compliance, then storing backups off-platform and making them immutable is non-negotiable.
💡 Recovery Tip:
Your provider won’t recover your data for you.Use a third-party backup solution - like Keepit - that’s completely independent. Backups should live in a platform designed only to protect and recover data - not run it.
🔁 4. It Disappears During the Big Move
Cloud migrations are exciting - but they’re also high-risk.
In the rush to modernise, organisations often overlook one uncomfortable truth: migration is one of the most dangerous times for your data.
We’ve seen it all:
🔄 Permissions mysteriously vanish during tenant moves.
⚠️ Sync conflicts silently corrupt files across platforms.
🕳️ Critical gaps emerge - because no one tested a rollback plan.
📆 Legacy retention policies get lost in the shuffle.
💾 Backups don’t follow the data - or worse, get wiped by mistake.
And because most migrations happen under pressure - with deadlines, vendor changes, and internal politics - assumptions become shortcuts.
But shortcuts in migration turn into long-term loss.
That’s why every migration plan must include:
✅ Pre-migration backup validation
✅ Post-migration restore testing
✅ Platform-agnostic backup that moves with you
✅ A way to recover data even if the migration fails
🔐 Resilience isn’t just about being in the cloud - it’s about having control when the cloud changes underneath you.
💡 Recovery Tip:
Before any migration, take a full point-in-time backup - and test restoring from it. Don’t just hope the new system works. Make sure you can recover if it doesn’t.
✅ Final Thoughts:
Disruption is inevitable.
Recovery is a choice.
Make sure you’ve made the right one.
Whether it’s user error, ransomware, vendor outage or migration failure - you can’t fix it if you can’t recover it.
At FullBackup, we work with organisations across Australia to deliver Keepit’s market-leading SaaS backup platform - built for:
Immutable, air-gapped protection
Fast, granular recovery
Independent storage - not tied to Microsoft, Google, or AWS
Real testing, not assumptions
🟦 Ready to see what real recovery feels like?
👉 Start your free trial or👉 Book a 15-minute demo
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